Picture this: You’re watching the wings open on the Museum’s Quadracci Pavilion and you realize you hear music… Ever wonder who is behind its creation? I have! The answer is the talented Kris Martinez, Interactive Designer at the Museum. Below, straight from Kris, is everything you ever wanted to know about the music of the Museum.

My name is Kris Martinez, and I am an Interactive Designer at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Some of my daily tasks include designing websites for our feature exhibitions, creating interactive installations, and creating television commercials. I also compose musical themes for the Museum.

For the past year, the Museum has featured short musical pieces that play when the wings open and close. This happens three times a day: 10 AM when the Museum opens, noon when the wings flap, and 5 PM (or 8 PM on Thursdays) when the Museum closes. Each arrangement is unique and is inspired by the Museum’s feature exhibition.

Shirt with "painterly" view of the Milwaukee Art Museum submitted by T-shirt design contest winner McKenna Schoonover. Available at the Museum Store.

This spring, the Milwaukee Art Museum partnered with The A.V. Club Milwaukee to sponsor a design contest for a new line of T-shirts to be sold in the Museum Store.

The contest prompted the designers with the question “What does the Art Museum mean to you?”

Clearly, this question was a launching pad for a variety of interpretations.

Milwaukee’s creative community was inspired and the Museum received dozens of submissions which were voted on by friends “liking” the individual designs on The A.V. Club’s Facebook page. There were too many fantastic ideas to pick just one, so in the end I’m thrilled that the Art Museum has two fresh new designs to offer in the Museum Store!

Gaetano Trentanove, The Last of the Spartans (Detail), ca. 1892. Marble. Layton Art Collection, Gift of William E. Cramer. Photo by the author.

The Museum Collection contains endless stories. Our paintings hold narratives of mythological legends; decorative art objects tell us of life way-back-when; contemporary art puts our finger on the pulse of what is going on now. But have you ever traced a story through the Collection? There are many ways to do this: you could follow an artist’s work through his or her lifetime, a collector’s vision (Mrs. Bradley, Mr. Layton, the list goes on…), or you could really veer off the beaten track and follow the story of a material–you know, what an art object is made out of. One of our super-star materials? Marble!